Atolls Of The Sun - free ebook by Frederick O'Brien

ATOLLS OF THE SUN

Photo from L. Gauthier Nature’s mirror showed him why he could not leave ...

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FOREWORD

“Atolls of the Sun” is a book of experiences, impressions, and dreams in the strange and lonely islands of the South Seas. It does not aim to be literal, or sequential, though everything in it is the result of my wanderings in the far and mysterious recesses of the Pacific Ocean. I am not a scientist or scholar, and can relate only what I saw and heard, felt and imagined, in my dwelling with savage and singular races among the wonderful lagoons of the coral atolls, and poignant valleys of disreg

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CHAPTER I

Leaving Tahiti—The sunset over Moorea—Bound for the Paumotu Atolls—The Schooner Marara, Flying Fish —Captain Jean Moet and others aboard—Sighting and Landing on Niau. “NOUS partons! We air off—off!” shouted Capitaine Moet, gaily, as the Marara , the schooner Flying Fish , slipped through the narrow, treacherous pass of the barrier-reef of Papeete Harbor. “ Mon ami , you weel by ’n’ by say dam Moet for take you to ze Iles Dangereuses . You air goin’ to ze worse climate in ze sacré mundo . Eet ees

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CHAPTER II

Meeting with Tommy Eustace, the trader—Strange soil of the atoll—A bath in the lagoon—Momuni, the thirsty bread baker—Off for Anaa. THE crusader who entered Jerusalem had no deeper feeling of realization of a long-cherished hope than I when my foot imprinted its mold in the glistening sand of the atoll of Niau. I stood in my track and scanned it, as Crusoe the first human mark other than his own he saw on his lonely island. Not with his dismay, but yet with a slight panic, a pleasant but alarmed

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CHAPTER III

Perilous navigation—Curious green sky—Arrival at Anaa—Religion and the movies—Character of Paumotuans. A CURRENT set against us all night. Now I understood fully the alarms and misgivings that had caused the first and following discoverers of the “Pernicious Islands” to curse them by the titles they gave them. Our current was of the mischievous sort that upset logarithms and dead reckoning, and put ships ashore. “This group is a graveyard of vessels,” said McHenry, “and there’d be ten times as m

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CHAPTER IV

The copra market—Dangerous passage to shore at Kaukura—Our boat overturns in the pass—I narrowly escape death—Josephite Missionaries—The deadly nohu—The himene at night. WORD we got at Anaa of a few tons of copra at Kaukura sent us hurrying there. The wind was against us, and we drew long sides of a triangle before we reached that atoll, which was, as our starting-point, at the base of the isosceles. Kaukura was a divergence from our intended course, but these schooners were like birds of the ai

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CHAPTER V

Captain Moet tells of Mapuhi, the great Paumotuan—Kopcke tells about women—Virginia’s jealousy—An affrighting waterspout—The wrecked ship—Landing at Takaroa. “Maintenant ”, said Captain Moet, as he gave orders for the course, “we weel veesit ze king ov ze Paumotu. Monsieur O’Breeon, ’e got no nose, bot ’e ees magnifique . ’E like out ov ze story-book. Ze bigges’ tradaire, ze bes’ divaire, ze bon père ov ze Paumotu. An’ ’e ees reech, eef ’e don’ geeve ’way ev’rysing. Nevaire ’ave I know one hombr

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CHAPTER VI

Diffidence of Takaroans—Hiram Mervin’s description of the cyclone—Teamo’s wonderful swim—Mormon missionaries from America—I take a bath. THERE was no stir on the quay of Takaroa. In these latitudes the civilized stranger is shocked by the indifference to his arrival of the half-naked native. It enrages a prideful white. He perhaps remembers the pages of Cook and the other discoverers, who wrote of the overflowing enthusiasm of the new-found aborigines for them; but he forgets the pages of histor

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CHAPTER VII

Breakfast with elders—The great Mapuhi enters—He tells of San Francisco—Of prizefighters and Police gazettes—I reside with Nohea—Robber crabs—The cats that warred and caught fish. TIMES in my life a bath had been a guerdon after days of denial in desert and at sea, but seldom so grateful as that in the stony garden of Mapuhi under the tropical sun. My wounds were healing, but the new skin forming in a score of places bound me like patches of plaster. Not many houses in the Paumotus were construc

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CHAPTER VIII

I meet a Seventh Day Adventist missionary, and a descendant of a mutineer of the Bounty—They tell me the story of Pitcairn island—An epic of isolation. MAPUHI, though a zealous Mormon, was not illiberal in his posture toward other faiths. In his long years he had entertained a number of them as ways to salvation before the apostles of Salt Lake sent their evangelists to Takaroa. A day or two after landing he brought to Nohea’s hut two aliens, whom, he said, I should know, because their language

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CHAPTER IX

The fish in the lagoon and sea—Giant clams and fish that poison—Hunting the devilfish—Catching bonito—Snarling turtles—Trepang and sea cucumbers—The mammoth manta. THE schooner Marara unloaded her cargo of supplies after several days of riding on and off the lee of the island, and went on her voyage to other atolls. McHenry and Kopcke joined interests for the nonce, and tried to draw me into the net they said they were spreading for the natives. I was convinced that I was as edible fish for them

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CHAPTER X

Traders and divers assembling for the diving—A story told by Llewellyn at night—The mystery of Easter Island—Strangest spot in the world—Curious statues and houses—Borrowed wives—Arrival of English girl—Tragedy of the Meke Meke festival. THE scene at Takaroa was now remindful in a diminutive way of the bustle and turmoil before the opening of a camp-meeting in the United States. The traders and pearl-buyers of Tahiti began to assemble, and divers and their families of other islands to arrive. So

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CHAPTER XI

Pearl hunting in the lagoon—Previous methods wasteful—Mapuhi shows me the wonders of the lagoon—Marvelous stories of sharks—Woman who lost her arm—Shark of Samoa—Deacon who rode a shark a half hour—Eels are terrible menace. THE lagoon of Takaroa was to be the scene of intense activity and of incredible romance for the period of the open season for hunting the pearl-oyster. Eighty years or more of this fishing had been a profitable industry in Takaroa, especially for the whites who owned or comma

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CHAPTER XII

History of the pearl hunger—Noted jewels of past—I go with Nohea to the diving—Beautiful floor of the lagoon—Nohea dives many times—Escapes shark narrowly—Descends 148 feet—No pearls reward us—Mandel tells of culture pearls. MUCH of the mystery and myth of these burning atolls was concerned with the quest of pearls. In all the world those gems had been a subject of romance, and legend had draped their search with a myriad marvels. Poets and fictionists in many tongues had embroidered their gossa

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CHAPTER XIII

Story of the wondrous pearls planted in the lagoon of Pukapuka—Tepeva a Tepeva, the crippled diver, tells it—How a European scientist improved on nature—Tragedy of Patasy and Mauraii—The robbed coral bank—Death under the sea. THE palace of the governor was within half a mile of my abode in the vale of Atuona, on the island of Hiva-Oa, the capital of the Marquesan Archipelago. It was a broad and deep valley, “the most beautiful, and by far the most ominous and gloomy, spot on earth,” said Stevens

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CHAPTER XIV

The palace of the governor of the Marquesas in the vale of Atuona—Monsieur L’Hermier des Plantes, Ghost Girl, Miss Tail, and Song of the Nightingale— Tapus in the South Seas—Strange conventions that regulate life—A South Seas Pankhurst—How women won their freedom. IN Mapuhi’s store, on the counter, taken from the cabin of the County of Roxburgh , lay twenty-five pearls. They were of different values, two or three magnificent in size, in shape, and in luster, the fruit of Mapuhi’s tribe’s harvest

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CHAPTER XV

The dismal abode of the Peyrals—Stark-white daughter of Peyral—Only white maiden in the Marquesas—I hunt wild bulls—Peyral’s friendliness—I visit his house—He strikes me and threatens to kill me—I go armed—Explanation of the bizarre tragic comedy. AS I walked up from the beach of Atuona, where I had touched the shore of the Marquesas for the first time, I had remarked a European dwelling, squalid, forbidding and peculiarly desolate. Painted black originally, the heat and storms of years had worn

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CHAPTER XVI

In the valley of Vaitahu—With Vanquished Often and Seventh Man He Is So Angry He wallows in the Mire—Worship of beauty in the South Seas—Like the ancient Greeks—Care of the body—Preparations for a belle’s début—Massage as a cure for ills. ACROSS the Bordelaise Channel from Atuona, many hours of sailing in an outrigger canoe, lay the island of Tahuata. Its principal settlement was Vaitahu, and there I went with Exploding Eggs, my adopted brother of fourteen, to stay awhile in the house of the chi

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CHAPTER XVII

Skilled tattooers of Marquesas Islands a generation ago—Entire bodies covered with intricate tattooed designs—The foreigner who had himself tattooed to win the favor of a Marquesan beauty—The magic that removed the markings when he was recalled to his former life in England. TATTOOING, the marking of designs on the human skin in life, is an art so old that its beginnings are lost to records. It was practised when the Neolithic brute went out to club his fellows and drag in his body to the fire h

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CHAPTER XVIII

A fantastic but dying language—The Polynesian or Maori Tongue—Making of the first lexicons—Words taken from other languages—Decay of vocabularies with decrease of population—Humors and whimsicalities of the dictionary as arranged by foreigners. MALICIOUS Gossip and Le Brunnec taught me Marquesan in the “man-eating isle of Hiva-Oa,” as Stevenson termed my home. After supper or dinner I had a lesson in my paepae ; often in a mixed group, for the beginnings of democracy are in the needs of company.

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CHAPTER XIX

Tragic Mademoiselle Narbonne—Whom shall she marry?—Dinner at the home of Wilhelm Lutz—The Taua , the Sorcerer—Lemoal says Narbonne is a Leper—I visit the Taua —The prophecy. AS long as I live, I shall have, as my avatar of tragedy, Mademoiselle Narbonne. Fate had marked her for desolation. The grim drama of the half-caste whose spirit is riven by heredity and environment, fighting for supremacy of the soul, was enacted here in scenes of rare intensity and mournful fitness. While I did not await

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CHAPTER XX

Holy Week—How the rum was saved during the storm—An Easter Sunday “Celebration”—The Governor, Commissaire Bauda and I have a discussion—Paul Vernier, the Protestant pastor, and his Church—How the girls of the valley imperilled the immortal souls of the first missionaries—Jimmy Kekela, his family—A watch from Abraham Lincoln. HOLY Week passed in a riot of uncommon amusement. Its religious significance—the most sacred period of the year both for Catholics and Protestants—was emphasized by priest a

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CHAPTER XXI

Paul Gauguin, the famous French-Peruvian artist—a rebel against the society that rejected him while he lived, and now cherishes his paintings. ABOVE the village of Atuona was the hill of Calvary, as the French named the Catholic cemetery. Often in the late afternoon I went there to watch the sun go down behind the peak of Temetiu, and to muse over what might come into my mind. My first visit had been with Charles Le Moine, the school teacher of Vaitahu, and the only painter living in the Marques

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CHAPTER XXII

Monsieur l’Inspecteur des Etablissements Français de l’Océanie—How the School House was Inspected—I Receive My Congé—The Runaway Pigs—Mademoiselle Narbonne goes with Lutz to Papeete to be Married—Père Siméon, about whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote. ONE must admit that the processes of government in my islands were simple. Since only a couple of thousand Marquesans, of an original myriad, were alive, after three score years of colonialism, officialdom had lessened according to the mortuary stati

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CHAPTER XXIII

McHenry gets a caning—The fear of the dead—A visit to the grave of Mapuhi—En voyage. IMAGINE my delight when the captain of the Saint François set our course for Takaroa, the atoll of Mapuhi, Nohea, and the crippled diver who had possessed the great pearl of Pukapuka! The Marquesas Islands are only eight hundred miles from the Society Islands, of which Tahiti is one, and between the Marquesas and the Society Islands lie the strewn eighty atolls of the Iles Dangereuses or Paumotu group. With stea

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A Letter from Exploding Eggs

O Nakohu. O au Kaoha tuuhoa Koakoau itave tekao ipatumai to Brunnec; Na Brunnec paki mai iau, tuu onotia Kaoha oko au iave; Atahi au ame tao ave oe itiki iau Aua oto maimai omua ahee taua I Menike ua ite au Ta Panama ohia umetao au ua hokotia au eoe Ite aoe. Mea meitai ote mahina ehee mai oe I Tahiti ahaka ite mai oe iau Eavei tau I Tahiti etahi Otaua fiti tia mai mei Tahiti Ta maimai oe eavei tau I Tahiti Patu mai oe itatahi hamani nau naete inoa Brunnec. Eahaa iapati mai oe ukoana iau totaua p

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From Exploding Eggs

It is I, Nakohu, always, my dear master. I have been very glad to receive news of you by Le Brunnec, and I have seen that you have not forgotten me. It has given me much sorrow that I did not go with you. I should have seen Panama and many things, but I was afraid that you would grow tired of me and sell me to other Americans. If it is true that you will return here, write to me in advance by Le Brunnec, and I will go to get you in Papeete. For your stay in Atuona, fear nothing. I have now a nic

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Letter from Malicious Gossip

E tuu ona hoa: U Koana i au taoe hama ni, koakoa oko an i te ite i ta oe tau te kao. A oe e koe te peau o Mohotu Vehine-hae, i te a te tekao, mimi, pake, namu, Tahiatini, aoe i koe toia, ate, totahi teoko, tohutohui toia hee, mehe ihepe Purutia i tihe mai nei io matou. Titihuti, na mate ite hitoto. Te moi a Kake ua mate ite hitoto, i tepo na mate, titahi, popoui ua mate, tatahi, popoui ua mate, titahi, popoui ua mate, te moupuna o Titihuti. U fanau an i te tama e moi o (Elizabethe Taavaupoo) toi

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Letter from Mouth of God

E tuu ona hoa: E patu atu nei au i tenei hamani ia oe me tou Kaoha nui. Mea meitai matou paotu. E tiai nei an i taoe hamani, me te Kakano pua, me te mana roti, u haa mei—tai au i titahi keke fenua kei oko, mea tanu roti. Eia titahi mea aoe au e kokoa koe nui oe i kokoa koe nui oe i kaoha mai ian Koakoa oko nui matou i taoe hamani A patu oe i titahi hamani i tooe hoa, o Vai Etienn ena ioto ote Ami Koakoa, Apatu oe ia Vehine-hae ena i tohe ahi, o te haraiipe. E na Tahiatini i Tarani me L’Hermier,

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Letter from Le Brunnec to Frederick O’Brien at Sausalito, California.

(Translation) Cher ami: You ask me what has become of Barbe Narbonne, of the valley of Taaoa. I will tell you briefly, and probably some of what I shall say you already know. She was married to Wilhelm Lutz, the Tahauku trader, in Tahiti, and all went well. Her mother was at the wedding, but not Maná, his long-time companion in Taiohae and Atuona. The married pair occupied the upper floor of the German firm’s big store. There was much gaiety among the Germans and her Tahitian friends. For the fi

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